This week Emerald City, a stylised retelling of The Wizard of Oz, arrives on British TV. In the US its disturbing imagery - crucifixions, hands covered in jewel-like boils, a Wicked Witch of the West who "vomits" spells - has already led to the show being called the most insane version of Oz yet.

But how could Emerald City possibly be stranger than Wizard of Oz author L Frank Baum (1856-1919) and the even stranger world he created in his much-loved children’s books? Let us count the ways:

Baum advocated the extermination of Native Americans

Before finding success as an author, Baum was a journalist. During the 1890s, shortly after the killing of Sitting Bull, he wrote for the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer stating that the survival of white American settlers depended on the genocide of American Indians.

He wrote: “The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands.”

In 2006, Baum’s ancestors apologised to the Sioux Nation for the hurt caused by his writing.

And even his children’s books are racially dubious

In the Woggle Bug Book, the Arabs are depicted as hostile and menacing as they try to kill the title character, a sort of camp gaudy insect with a love for Wagnerian plaid and omnisexual tastes.

To make matters worse, the Woggle Bug convinces them that murdering him will bring them bad luck, thus confirming the stereotype that they are a superstitious race. Baum writes: “Now the greatest aversion the Arabs have is to be chewed by a crocodile, because these people usually roam over the sands of the desert, where to meet an amphibian is simply horrible…”

Yet he was an early male feminist

Baum’s engagement with the radical feminist politics of the early 20th century found its way into his second novel - The Marvellous Land of Oz. General Jinjur leads an army of women in a revolt against household chores with knitting needles as their weapons of choice.

General Jinjur

By the third novel, Ozma of Oz, Jinjur is a happily married dairy farmer’s wife - though it is noted that her husband is sporting a black eye because he milked the wrong cow!

He once opened his own opera house

Baum was a prolific playwright and opened an opera house in upstate New York which housed much of his work. Plays included The Maid of Arran, a rather OTT Irish melodrama which included several lavish set pieces, including a storm upon a ship.

Tragically, like many of Baum’s ventures, things ended in disaster when the theatre burned down destroying costumes, props and manuscripts of his plays.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was just one big political metaphor

In 1964, historian Henry Littlefield identified connections between Baum’s first novel and the political uncertainty of 1890s America.

He believed the book contains an allegory of the monetary policy of the time, with the Yellow Brick Road representing the gold standard and the silver slippers (they were only ruby in the 1939 film) the Silverite movement who wanted the metal to be a monetary standard.

Dorothy's ruby slippers

Furthermore, he saw the Scarecrow as representing agricultural workers of the 1890s, and the Tin Woodman as an embodiment of those working in the steel industry. The Cowardly Lion, meanwhile, was based on Democrat politician William Jennings Bryan.

The Hungry Tiger and suppressed desire

One of the oddest characters in the Oz books is the Hungry Tiger, a rather benign looking creature who nevertheless carps about his desire “to eat a fat baby”. Only his conscience prevents him from doing so, thus averting a rather adult Oz story. In fact, Ozma of Oz is essentially a very disturbing novel with Dorothy nearly decapitated by a crazy princess who owns a large collection of disembodied heads.

The Oz books are bonkers...

The Emerald City of Oz, the sixth entry in the series, contain several races which are never heard of again. These include a group of anthropomorphic jigsaw puzzles known as the Fuddles, some anthropomorphic giant pastries, and a group of living kitchen utensils.

Not to mention a colony of civilised rabbits and a crab and zebra engaged in a bitter dispute over geographical boundaries.

The Emerald City of Oz's warring crab and zebra

...and also incredibly violent

In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the Tin Woodman hacks several assailants to death (MGM wisely omitted this from the film) and even young Dorothy has a bloodthirsty streak.

When she captures a flying monkey, the Kansas farmgal threatens to rip off his wings and feed them to the Cowardly Lion. She then says she will smash his skull and we learn that the poor creature’s screams were heard all over Oz.